Is this what we're teaching people?

So I received a letter yesterday from my alma mater that really bothered me. It was encouraging me to come to Homecoming, meet the new head of the Theatre Department, etc. The letter in and of itself wasn’t the problem. The problem was, there were two errors in it. One was a period at the end of a phrase, making it difficult for me to read the sentence as it wasn’t actually a complete sentence the way it had been written. The second mistake was that it had “our” instead of “are. Very different words!

I had made the comment to Chris that this letter bothered me, especially coming from an academic institution. I even had him read it, but he didn’t find any errors. I then pointed them out to him, and he didn’t think it was a big deal- just a couple of typos and that they didn’t proof read it. Well, yeah. That’s exactly the problem. A letter being sent out to hundreds of people (it was only sent out to theatre majors) shouldn’t have those kinds of errors. It should have been proof read. I’m not saying I’m perfect. I often have errors in things I write. But to me, coming from a university, this never should have happened.

I have no idea who typed the letter. It could have been the former Department Chair (whose name was on the letter), an assistant, a student, someone in the alumni office, etc. I don’t think it necessarily matters who made the mistakes. But I ask this of you now, am I overreacting to this, or do you agree that this paints the university in a poor light?